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Friday, October 4, 2013

Traveling in time

The PELNI*
experience

May began and
ended with trouble. As soon as we boarded the Bukit Siguntang at
23:00 hrs. in Makassar, we finally understood what that likeable member
of the crew that brought us from Kalimantan, had meant by saying "enjoy
that trip". It is unimaginable the chaos that was this boat when
we boarded. Thousands of people occupying every corner of it. The
overcrowded communal bedrooms, crammed with people sleeping next to
each other, intoxicating cigarette smoke floating in the air,
mountains of bags, packages, boxes with fruits and all kinds of crap.
People crowded into every available corner outside the bedroom, in
hallways, stairs, lying on cardboard or empty rice bags to separate
them from a grimy floor, crying children and babies everywhere,
bathrooms giving off corrosive smell…you can imagine, no? Surely
not. The only spot we found was on the floor of the corridor leading
to the kitchen, a permanent transit space with a bullhorn blasting
announcements directly above us with a piercing volume, especially at
4.30 am during the first daily call to pray. There, in that oppressive
space, we spent the next 36 hrs. sailing to Kupang in West Timor.

The PELNI are a
world in themselves. Today they have been reduced to the transportation of the
poorest, because the number of low cost airlines operating today made possible that many people have access to buy a plane ticket. The PELNI are
slow, to use them requires planning well in advance and there are
islands that only have service once or twice a month. Sometimes it
can take up to a week to get from one point to another, but this is
the only means of transport by which the greatest number of
Indonesians can move from island to island. Perhaps the biggest
annoyance is not the overcrowding or repulsive food included with the
ticket or the ghostly bathrooms, but unfortunately, the necessity to
keep an eye on the belongings because there are always crooks poking
around the property of others. Having said that, most people, as
always, were very friendly and generous and helped us as they could so
that we had a more comfortable space.

Here, a short
video briefing of what it is a trip on a nearly full PELNI :

After 36 hrs.
and two stops, we arrived to Kupang very badly asleep, with every
bone aching from sleeping on the floor and for having been continuously and abruptly
awakened by the screams coming out of that shitty megaphone making
irrelevant announcements, but happy to have left that damn ship in a
spectacular day. The island of Timor is directly in front of the
northern coast of Australia, not many miles away and this gives it an
incredible micro-climate. The winds from the Outback ( Australian
Desert ) transform the originally humid tropical climate in a dry
one. It was a real pleasure to pedal and, for the first time in a
long time, without feeling the body sticky all the time. It was hot
and the sun was strong, but at least for me, it became more tolerable
by being dry.Kupang is an
ugly city, located on the westernmost tip of the island, but enclosed by
turquoise seas and mountains of exotic forms. As soon as we started
pedaling out of the harbor, Julia began to feel extremely weak, with
shining eyes, sleep and fever. It was quite possible that the
overwhelming trip in the PELNI and the lack of rest made her unbalanced.We made the
effort to go straight to the consulate of Timor Leste to process our
visas and then, we went directly to the guesthouse, where she spent
three days sleeping almost continuously, with fever peaks mitigated
with Paracetamol. I began to suspect something more serious than
simple fatigue, but on the fourth day, Julia was relatively well and
we started off towards the border of Timor Leste. There had been
barely 10 km when she had already lost all the strength and I had not
doubts anymore: it had to be dengue fever. Our problem was that we had to get to
the border and we only had 4 days for our visas to expire. So we
decided to put the bikes in a bus to make the 300 km trip because
anyway, we were going to be able to cycle them in our way back since there was no other road. At a stop for
lunch, a young mother with her son approached me looking worried and
said: "your wife (in Indonesia we say to be married) does not
look good, she is sick, isn't she?" I said: "yes and I suspect
that she has dengue fever". She worried and told me that if we
did not have a place to sleep in Atambua, the border town, we could stay at her house, and so it was. Sinema, her charming husband Wilko and their
three beautiful children welcomed us into their home. From that day
onward, Sinema was a mother who ran for us, and specifically for
Julia, from side to side, moving heaven and earth until her recovery.
We drove to the hospital where dengue fever was confirmed by a
doctor. There, they wanted Julia to be admitted to the hospital
paying an amount equal to 100 US dollars per day. But Sinema
suspected that price was way too high and took us to a prestigious family doctor
friend who attended Julia free and recommended the typical dengue
treatment of rest and regular hydration. Meanwhile, Sinema took me to
the markets to buy fruits for Julia, prepared special meals and did
all she could to get Julia back to a healthy condition. It was a slow
process since dengue produces an imbalance in the blood that takes
several days to normalize. Two blood tests per day were needed to
follow the evolution of the disease closely.

But migration problems
know no disease and we either had to leave the country or start paying
fines. I went to the immigration office and Sinema accompanied me to
see how to fix the problem. There was no other solution than to
extend our visa or leave the country on time, but to extend our visa
a local sponsor was required. Sinema thought about it, consulted it with
Wilko and both, decided to be our sponsor preventing us from having to
leave the country under these conditions

This is a huge
responsibility for an Indonesian. When they decided to be our
sponsor, anything that happens to us or we do wrong, will fall on
them. Even so, they decided to do it and our immigration problem was
solved.

Sinema and Wilko
were for 7 days our angels, our family itself. Not knowing much about
us, looked after us and treated us like we were part of their own
family. Indonesian people act this way and there are no words to
describe it. While in the West we lose these qualities by becoming
more selfish, individualistic and self-centered day by day, here,
fortunately, the most essential values ​​of our humanity still
survive.

We lived as a family
with them and we will always be eternally grateful for their love, affection and
their selfless hospitality.

Our plans to
reach Timor Leste were canceled and although we wanted to go, we
really wanted to do it out of necessity, and not because it is a
country with something specifically attractive to visit.

Timorese really are
more or less the same people on both sides of the border (but
obviously the separatists will deny it outright), share the Catholic
religion, the Portuguese ancestors and customs.Still, in 2000,
pro-separatist Indonesians created enough reasons to annihilate
each other and achieve the independence of Timor Leste.

Geographically
the island is very similar on both sides, so we have not lost
something unique. After a week with our host family and Julia with
their blood back to normal, we started our way back pedaling toward
Kupang in this fascinating island, so unlike anything previously seen,
since the climate is not the only change but also the ethnicity. There
are two major Timorese groups: those of Portuguese ancestors, who
follow the Catholic religion with features more similar to the
Indonesian and those of Papuan origin who maintain ancestral
traditions, are animists, until recently were still headhunters and
still live prehistorically in their ume
kebubu.

The similarity in features of these Timorese with
Aboriginal Australians is pretty amazing and they are closer to them than to the
Indonesian - Malaysian - Filipino ethnicity.

Because of
the dengue setback, we ran out of time to travel through the remote path
I had planned on the island, but even so, following the main path,
the melting pot is fascinating to say the least. The ume
kebubu
are everywhere and with them, a funny thing happens. The Indonesian
government considers a threat this kind of places and builds sordid
houses of cement blocks for the people. But local people considered
the government construction dangerous and therefore, they build a new
ume
kebubu
behind the cement block house and live in it. There is nothing more
futile than trying to kill an ancient tradition, no? And I'm glad
that this is so.

The ume
kebubu
have no ventilation at all, its small door is one meter high and its
shaped honeycomb straw roof just manages to reach the floor. Its
construction and design allow to keep it cool inside when it's hot
outside and warm inside when it's cold outside. Inside, people hang
corn to dry from their roofs. It's hard to believe that such perfect
and old examples of vernacular architecture still survive in the
twenty-first century and people still live in them like they did
hundreds of years ago.

The locals are
incredibly cheerful, full of life, smiling with their torn mouths,
stained red with black broken teeth by the addiction to what they
call siripina,
a mixture of betel nut with herbs, wrapped in a sheet of banana leaves
placed between the gums and the inside of the cheeks and then chewed.
It is almost exactly the same as the Indian paan.
Like there, people seem to have their mouth painted with lipstick
outside and bleeding inside, although it is neither one nor the
other, but the color and texture of the siripina. It is not a drug,
but it has a mild narcotic effect and people become addicted to chew it
all day. The remains are everywhere on the floor, people spit it and
everywhere you can see the patches of spittle that look more like
those of a colony of tuberculosis patients spitting blood. The effect in the
mouth is not for the squeamish. A very cheerful lady, broke in
laughter while I was taking pictures of her and unwittingly, knife in hand,
gave me a smile that could terrify the very mother of Norman Bates in
Psycho.

The road took us
over town after town. The surroundings of Kefa
(Kefamenanu), Niki Niki, Soe,
are an open-air museum of fascinating people, wearing traditional
dresses and govern their life according to the same habits of hundreds
of years ago.

The interior of
West Timor is very hilly and we had to go up and down constantly. But
we had had a good rest and while Julia was still in recovery, could
cope very well with the road. The magnificent dry weather coupled
with the high altitude in which the villages are located, made
​​things much more comfortable for us. The nights were cool
without being cold and the days were warm without being stifling. It was a
real pleasure.

After three long
days of rolling, we reached the final descent to Kupang over the end
of the day, with a colorful extravaganza in the mountainous landscape
of Timor.

We arrived in
Kupang late in the evening, ready to eat the same delicious dish I
had eaten every night on the street market, during our first stop there: a
delicious grilled fish, fresh from the sea, cooked and seasoned on the spot. Accompanied by a soursop smoothie, a fruit that became
almost an addiction for me. A delight like no other. We had to gather a
lot of energy and will power, since the next day we would have to board once
again the damn Bukit Sigungtang, this time for just 18 hours, on the
way to Maumere, in Flores Island. It was time to start making the
route of the volcanoes.